To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

by Daniel H. Pink

The less frame

Framing people’s options in a way that restricts their choices can help them see those choices more clearly instead of overwhelming them.

The experience frame

Some things are material purchases—“made with the primary intention of acquiring . . . a tangible object that is kept in one’s possession.” Others are experiential purchases—“made with the primary intention of acquiring . . . an event or a series of events that one lives through.”

Several researchers have shown that people derive much greater satisfaction from purchasing experiences than they do from purchasing goods.

framing a sale in experiential terms is more likely to lead to satisfied customers and repeat business.

The blemished frame

Can a negative ever be a positive when it comes to moving others? That’s what three marketing professors investigated in a 2012 study. In one set of experiments, they presented information about a pair of hiking boots as if the study participants were shopping for them online. To half the group, researchers listed all the great things about the boots—orthopedic soles, waterproof material, a five-year warranty, and more. To the other half, they included the same list of positives, but followed it with a negative—these boots, unfortunately, came in only two colors. Remarkably, in many cases the people who’d gotten that small dose of negative information were more likely to purchase the boots than those who’d received the exclusively positive information.

The researchers dubbed this phenomenon the “blemishing effect”—where “adding a minor negative detail in an otherwise positive description of a target can giv...

But the blemishing effect seems to operate only under two circumstances. First, the people processing the information must be in what the researchers call a “low effort” state. That is, instead of focusing resolutely on the decision, they’re proceeding with a little less effort—perhaps because they’re busy or distracted. Se...

The potential frame

People often find potential more interesting than accomplishment because it’s more uncertain, the researchers argue. That uncertainty can lead people to think more deeply about the person they’re evaluating—and the more intensive processing that requires can lead to generating more and better reasons why the person is a good choice. So next time you’re selling yourself, don’t fixate only on what you achieved yesterday. Also emphasize the promise of what you could accomplish tomorrow.

Finding an Off-ramp

Once you’ve found the problem and the proper frame, you have one more step. You need t...

Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.

Become a curator.

In the old days, our challenge was accessing information. These days, our challenge is curating it. To make sense of the world, for ourselves and those we hope to move, we must wade through a mass of material flowing at us every day—selecting what’s relevant and discarding what’s not.

Fortunately, Beth Kanter—an expert in nonprofits, technology, and social media—has created a three-step...

Seek. Once you’ve defined the area in which you’d like to curate (for example, middle school education reform or the latest skateboard fashion trends or the virtues and vices of mortgage-backed securities), put together a list of the best sources of information. Then set aside time to scan those sources regularly. Kanter recommends at...

Sense. Here’s where you add the real value, by creating meaning out of the material you’ve assembled. This can be as simple as making an annotated list of Web links or even regularly maintaining your own blog. Sh...

Once you’ve collected the good stuff and organized it in a meaningful way, you’re ready to share it with your colleagues, your prospects, or your entire social network. You can do this through a regular e-mail or your own newsletter, or by using Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. As you share, you’ll help others see their ...

Find the one percent.

Don’t get lost in the crabgrass of details,

Instead, think about the essence of what you’re exploring—the one percent that gives life to the other ninety-nine. Understanding that one percent, and being able to explain it to others, is the hallmark of strong minds and good attorneys.

Clarity operates by the same logic. Whether you’re selling computers to a giant company or a new bedtime to your youngest child, ask yourself: “What’s the one percent?” If you can answer that question...

Kimberly Elsbach of the University of California, Davis, and Roderick Kramer of Stanford University spent five years in the thick of the Hollywood pitch process.

The award-winning study2 they wrote for the Academy of Management Journal offers excellent guidance even for those of us on the living room side of the streaming video.

Their central finding was that the success of a pitch depends as much on the catcher as on the pitcher.

In particular, Elsbach and Kramer discovered that beneath this elaborate ritual were two processes. In the first, the catcher (i.e., the executive) used a variety of physical and behavioral cues to quickly assess the pitcher’s (i.e., the writer’s) creativity. The catchers took passion, wit, and quirkiness as positive cues—and slickness, trying too hard, and offering lots of different ideas as negative ones. If the catcher categorized the pi...

The most valuable sessions were those in which the catcher “becomes so fully engaged by a pitcher that the process resembles a mutual collaboration,” the researchers found.

The purpose of a pitch isn’t necessarily to move others immediately to adopt your idea. The purpose is to offer something so compelling that it begins a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you.

The Six Successors to the Elevator Pitch

1. The one-word pitch

The ultimate pitch for an era of short attention spans begins with a single word—and doesn’t go any further.

The one-word pitch derives in part from Maurice Saatchi, who, with his brother Charles, founded the advertising agencies Saatchi & Saatchi and M&C Saatchi. For several years, Saatchi...

“In this model, companies compete for global ownership of one word in the public mind,” Saatchi writes. The companies’ aim, and the aim of this type of pitch, is “to define the one characteristic they most want associated with their brand around the world, and then own it. That is one-word equity.”

When anybody thinks of you, they utter that word. When anybody utters that word, they think of you.

2. The question pitch

questions often pack a surprising punch. Yet they’re underused when we try to move others, despite a raft of social science that suggests we should deploy them more often.

Beginning with research in the 1980s, several scholars have found that questions can outperform statements in persuading others.

For example, Robert Burnkrant and Daniel Howard of Ohio State University tested the potency of a series of short pitches to a group of undergraduates. At issue was whether universities should require seniors to pass a comprehensive exam as a condition of graduation. When the researchers presented strong arguments for the policy as questions (e.g., “Will passing a comprehensive exam be an aid to those who seek admission to graduate and professional schools?”), the participants were much likelier to support the policy than they were when presented with the equivalent argument as a statement. However, questions ...

3. The rhyming pitch

Rhymes boost what linguists and cognitive scientists call “processing fluency,” the ease with which our minds slice, dice, and make sense of stimuli.

Answer three key questions.

As you prepare your pitch, whichever variety you choose, clarify your purpose and strategy by making sure you can answer these three questions:

After someone hears your ...

What do you want them...

What do you want them...

What do you want th...

If you’ve got strong answers to these three questions, the pitch will com...